in 1997, mike shepherd bought A COMPUTER. in 1998, he accidentally discovered a UNIQUE GLITCH (patent pending) in the sound recording program that came with the computer. when a certain series of actions were taken, the sound recording program would generate 5.6 seconds of seemingly random BINARY NOISE and SOUND SAMPLES from the hard drive of the computer. each iteration of this glitch rendered a unique snatch of sound, which, when combined with other such snatches, started to sound something like ACTUAL ART. bastardizing a japanese term that means "terrible accident," mike named this undertaking TAIHEN ZIKO.
TAIHEN ZIKO worked mostly between the hours of 10pm and 2am, usually drunk, much to the delight of various roommates. in the summer of 1998, TAIHEN ZIKO made his first and only live appearance, opening for local grunge rock trio SCHTUCKET. at this performance, ZIKO was joined by JEREME FREY on tenor sax, RYAN SHOGREN on bass guitar, and JOHN HOAG (aka STEVIE NOW, aka TROUBLESOME TEXAS JOHNNY HURRICANE, aka TOMMY LEE HORSECOCK) on vocals. the performance was very, very loud.
while working on what would likely have been his greatest work, THE COMPUTER was taken to CIRCUIT CITY to have the modem repaired. on the way home from picking the computer up, ZIKO stopped at a record store, and left the windows of his car cracked. the computer was stolen and never seen again. fortunately, in a rare show of forsight, ZIKO had saved the majority of his works to a ZIP DISC.
if ZIKO can ever find another computer with the right SOFTWARE and the magic proportion of INTERNET PORN to CRUMMY WAVE FILES, he will continue his life's work.
in the interim, one D.W.L. was impressed enough with TAIHEN ZIKO's existing recordings to make them available for free download as MP3's, the file format everyone is talking about, via his D/A73 label/imprint. be sure to sample D/A73's other offerings while you're there.
